Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB in review

No one was surprised when Nvidia presented its GeForce GTX 1080 Ti at this year's Games Developer Conference (GDC). Surprisingly, there was only one thing: the price point of 700 dollars. Based on the specifications of the map, the GeForce G... Ashes of the Singularity (DX12) In the past, we've tested Ashes of the Singularity with the extreme setting. We have now changed this to "Crazy" in view of the assumed performance of the GTX 1080 Ti. It's no surprise that the... Doom (volcano) Using the same benchmark sequence and detail settings allows us to compare today's measurement results and data with those from our test of the Nvidia Titan X (Pascal) 12GB. This is relevant because Nvidi... Metro: Last Light (DX11) Despite its age, Metro: Last Light is a solid pillar of our benchmark collection, as the game can still really sweat even the most modern graphics cards. We use the "Very High" preset with 16x ... Tom Clancy's The Division (DX12) While we use the same "Ultra" detail setting for The Division testing, DX12 support has been added to the game since our Titan X test in August 2016, so these are completely new metrics. ... Power consumption The power consumption is approx. 13 watts in the idle exactly where you could expect them. What catches our eye, however, is the extreme difference between the power consumption of the cold and the fully heated car... Temperature behaviour under load Let's first look at how temperatures develop. The advantage of the DHE concept (Direct Heat Exhaust) is clearly visible, because the final temperature is roughly the same and the rise in gaming in the closed... Before the price announcement of Nvidia's Jen-Hsun on the big stage in San Francisco, there were a lot of discussions in the Tom's hardware team, where the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti would probably be priced. 800 dollars sounded almost too cheap; 900 Dollars...

Ashes of the Singularity (DX12)

In the past, we've tested Ashes of the Singularity with the extreme setting. We have now changed this to "Crazy" in view of the assumed performance of the GTX 1080 Ti.

It is no surprise that the GTX 1080 Ti moves performance-wise close to the Titan X (Pascal). True to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun's announcement, the new flagship at 2560 x 1440 pixels is even a bit faster than the Titan X.

Remarkably, AMD's Radeon R9 Fury beats the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and the GTX 1070 in average frame rates. But when you scroll through the charts, you notice that the Fury X produces frame-time spikes more often than the other cards. This reflects our unevenness graphics, in which almost 80 percent of the benchmark is absolutely fluid, but in the last five percent of the run the whole thing collapses noticeably, resulting in a much less even frame representation.

In the 4K resolution, nothing changes in the finish line. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti averages just under 60 FPS and never drops below the 40 FPS limit.

As before, the Radeon Fury X lands in the middle of the test field. It still shows worryingly high frame-time spikes, but Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 Ti seems even more prone to stuttering here.

But given the minimal frame rates of the GeForce GTX 1080 and the even weaker cards, you should either either reduce the image quality in Ashes or switch to a better graphics card for 4K gaming.

Battlefield 1 (DX12)

Our Battlefield 1 benchmark comes from the "Avanti Savoia!" -Storyline and we use an 80-second sequence at the beginning of "O La Vittoria". Of course, all candidates use DirectX 12 and the Ultra quality setting.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti has a 2560 x 1440 pixel advantage over the regular GTX 1080 and averages over 100 FPS. This is an increase of 68 percent compared to the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, the flagship of the last generation. AMD's fastest single-GPU solution desperately needs Vega's replacement, which is expected to be released in the next quarter.

The 4K resolution is more interesting because the higher resolution puts even more strain on these high-end graphics cards.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is just ahead of the Titan X (Pascal) in average frame rates and the lead on the GTX 1080 grows to almost 29 percent. This is significant because the GTX 1080 Ti remains above the 50 FPS limit in the complete test sequence and the 1080 is closer to 40 FPS.

Our Unevenness Index shows that GTX 1080 Ti and Titan X deliver almost consistently uniform frames, while the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and Radeon R9 Fury X spend about half of the test run in the "Average" playability range.

Civilization VI (DX12)

Let's face it: Civilization VI is not the best graphics benchmark, as it is primarily limited by the CPU – even on our Core i7-7700K. But we also know that Civ VI is a popular title. So we set all "Advanced" detail settings to the maximum and added 8x MSAA to increase the graphics load as much as possible.

Nevertheless, at 2560 x 1440 pixels resolution, all GeForce cards end up within a range of just a few FPS differences. The 1080 Ti even ranks at the lower end of this Nvidia concentration. However, the jump to Ultra-HD should give the GP102-based boards the opportunity to stretch their legs properly.

The order in the finish line shifts a bit at 4K. But the mere fact that four of the cards land around the 60 FPS mark (note: V-Sync and the game-internal frame limiter are disabled) conveys an important message to us: More graphics power is of no use here.

Civ VI will certainly appear more frequently in our CPU tests and perhaps in articles on mainstream graphics cards in the future, but it's just not a good measure of the performance of high-end GPUs.

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